Bellum omnium contra omnes

News Commentary

In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

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News commentary:

I believe that the events of last evening in Aurora, Colorado are the result of a person breaking under some massive weight that only he could feel. No one wakes up one day and decides that they are “The Joker”, buys guns, places bombs all over his home, and kills random strangers.

I think the events of last evening in Aurora, Colorado are the result of living in a world where comic book heroes are taken seriously when they shouldn’t be. You know what I mean. We’ve all had that conversation with people talking about characters in movies and tv shows as if they are real. I’ve often wondered how out of touch you can get, how far from reality you can get when you immerse yourself in modern culture. Apparently very far.

Some crazy kid lashes out at the world, arbitrarily at complete strangers, and leaves blood, death, pain and tears in his wake. I really do not know what to believe. I want to point a finger of blame at someone. At him obviously, but also at society, at the larger causes for this behavior, which happens every once in a while, enough where you have to think this is more than just some crazy guy. This is a sick society, twisted enough to create numbers of people like this, who just snap and take out people for no sane reason.

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And now for something completely different:

Iran hates Israel. In other news, the sky is blue…

But seriously, over the last 6 months, according to the NYPD, Iran and Hezbollah are behind a number of attempted terrorist attacks, and at least one successful one. A separate list created by federal authorities is by and large the same as the NYPD list. The bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria was apparently the work of either Hezbollah or Iran, and is considered a relatively sophisticated.

The Iranians are obviously dismissing the statements as both unfounded and politically motivated by Israel. Hezbollah says it has not carried out bombings against Israelis outside of Lebanon, and have not done any even within Lebanon since 2000.

The spokesman for Israeli P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu says that the number of attempts is more than twice that number. Twenty. Not the nine that U.S officials are pointing to.

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So when exactly did the NYPD become an international police force, that it is now monitoring the movements of Hezbollah for Israel? I can understand them monitoring things to protect New Yorkers. I can see them monitoring some international movements as they affect New York and it’s safety.

When did we become Israel’s police force? The number of attempted terrorist attacks by Hezbollah and Iran the NYPD(9) have listed are different from the Israeli governments(20) numbers. Seeing how the NYPD is as far away as they are from the places that are affected, it makes me wonder about that vast discrepancy. It also makes me wonder how effective they can be at counter terrorism, given that discrepancy.

It makes me wonder if I am wasting my money paying taxes into a system that allows our police to not do their jobs well, or properly, and still get paid for it with my tax dollars. Let the Feds, who do this shit, do it. Keep the NYPD in NY. Plain and simple, they aren’t keeping us safe when they aren’t home to keep us safe.

Not that they are even very good at that. They’re good at giving tickets. They’re good at beating up protesters who happen to have a point. Keeping us safe? How many crimes happened in New York last month? Last year? Wanna run that by me again?

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Just saying…

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Pic of the day, part ii: Charge of the Lancers, by Umberto Boccioni

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I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy.I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create…